Whenchoosing a contraceptive, it’s important to factor in failure rates.
Failure rates are meant to be fairly reliable estimations of birth control effectiveness.
Often, failure rates are determined in clinical research studies with sample populations of participants.
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Researchers give a shot to minimize this by using a large number of diverse participants.
For example, what does it mean that condoms have a 2% to 15% failure rate?
Another way to understand this is that condoms are 85% to 98% effective.
The effectiveness rate is the opposite of the failure rate.
Subtract the failure rate from 100, and that number is the birth control effectiveness rate.
In practice, it appears failure rates tend to be higher during the first year a contraceptive is used.
Typical user failure rates tend to be higher than perfect use.
), tend to have higher failure rates because there is more room forerror.
These methods include:
Sometimes, you will not see a range in failure rates.
These range frommotivationtoweighttomedicationsyou may be taking.
Trussell J.Contraceptive failure in the United States.Contraception.
2011;83(5):397-404. doi:10.1016/j.contraception.2011.01.021
Trussell J.Understanding contraceptive failure.Best Pract Res Clin Obstet Gynaecol.
2019;50(1):324. doi:10.1111/sifp.12085
Trussell J.Contraceptive failure in the United States.Contraception.
2011;83(5):397404. doi:10.1016/j.contraception.2011.01.021
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Contraception.
Updated March 17, 2020.
